Comments

I imagine many people came up like I did, without the money for a Mac. We built crappy PCs or bought them inexpensively from Gateway200. We developed some skill. We translated that skill to a career. And poof, we can afford Macs now.

Or gee, we just bought them used at a discount from new!

The horror! As I type this on an Early 2015 MacBook Air I got new, sealed in the box for $750 two years ago off of eBay. You don't always have to pay retail to get what you want.

I love the 180° turn in Mac design. Maybe I'm living in the reality distortion field, but the last few Mac hardware updates seem much more substantial. I love seeing them move their T chip technology through the Mac line. One could argue that the most likely Mac to leave off the T chip is the Mini—its (traditionally) such minimalist Mac. Putting a T chip in the Mini sends a signal that this is a core component fo the Mac platform moving forward.

When Intel leaves Apple with no significantly new tech for years, Apple has gotten resourceful and developed some great supporting technology. Best part about it is no other vendor can just order T chips from Intel to make equivalent secure machines. Apple is designing they own differentiating tech and they don't have to share it. Apple has been crafting a PR story about privacy and security for years. Now they have that strategy baked into silicon that will soon be shipping in every Mac.

I found this whitepaper from Apple (which is very nice) about the T2, and was updated this month.

Although I haven't read it in detail, I noticed that the T2 has many elements Windows and business devices as Thinkpads had for years. IBM/Lenovo have been offering hardware encrypted hard drives for close to 10 years. Windows 8 was the first version with Secure Boot and it think the first version of Windows that worked with the TPM chip. Windows 10 is a step higher, since now Bitlocker integrates with hardware encrypted HDD. Plus MS have Windows Hello since the SP4 a few years ago.

It's true that PC vendors don't have access to the T2 chip, but they still have the tools and hardware to secure their devices. At the end, it's nice to see that many vendors are looking seriously to secure their hardware.

I guess my point wasn't that no one else has these kind of features.

My point is that Apple developed it's own solution and didn't buy it from someone else.

When they buy from someone else, they end up victims of their own success: Apple required PowerPC chips with certain attributes, but since it wasn't aligned with the way their vendors wanted to take the platform, Apple had to jump ship. Now Intel is happy to sit on their laurels and milk the tech industry while releasing precious little breakthrough technology. Apple is in the position of having built up a market of users happy to pay a premium for premium product, but their vendors all like, "woah, there, big shooter! We are gonna take things REAL easy and trickle out the tech slowly and make every cent possible at every incremental improvement. That's how we roll."

I'm happy to see Apple roll their own, wether or not they invented the tech or not.

I love the 180° turn in Mac design. Maybe I'm living in the reality distortion field, but the last few Mac hardware updates seem much more substantial. I love seeing them move their T chip technology through the Mac line. One could argue that the most likely Mac to leave off the T chip is the Mini—its (traditionally) such minimalist Mac. Putting a T chip in the Mini sends a signal that this is a core component fo the Mac platform moving forward.

When Intel leaves Apple with no significantly new tech for years, Apple has gotten resourceful and developed some great supporting technology. Best part about it is no other vendor can just order T chips from Intel to make equivalent secure machines. Apple is designing they own differentiating tech and they don't have to share it. Apple has been crafting a PR story about privacy and security for years. Now they have that strategy baked into silicon that will soon be shipping in every Mac.

Puling in a tangential story: The way the iPad Pro is evolving points to a possible future where Macs and iOS devices are less separate systems designed to communicate with each other and become planets orbiting the binary star of MacOS & iOS. Some devices are close in to their host star (Macs, iPhones) some will orbit both as a binary system (iPad Pro). As time & tech move forward, it seems likely that more devices will jump to the higher orbit. Longer term, perhaps the distinction between MacOS & iOS will become insignificant for all but the most technical users.

To sum up: It appears to me that Apple is navigating its own path and developing its own technology to get it where it's going. I'm happy to be on board the platform that makes it's own OS's, develops almost all its own processing chips and isn't afraid to charge what the resulting products are worth, ensuring viability of the platform long-term.

I see a connection between Apple moving into its new headquarters, and how much smoother Mac OS hardware operations are moving forward.

Correlation is not causation, but if it is, we have a monster 2019 to look forward to.

Unfortunately, I feel Apple is losing touch with reality and that Tim Cook has surrounded himself with rich "yes" people, as the mini was originally made so the "poor" could afford a entry level computer, today that stopped as $800 is not affordable compared to entry level PC's, this logic also applies to iPads. Apple needs to introduce a sub-$500 entry level computer that would allow the masses to embrace. Ie, the mini default ram should be 16 and 8 for a true entry level $499 (today's offer is an insult to anyone with any computer knowledge!!)

Long Live Steve Job and I hope he visits Tim Cook in his dreams to wake Tim up to the masses that need better access... (Tim, this is why Android is still around, offer an actual affordable, true lowend product for the poor!!)

Yeah, $800 is a little high but I guess Apple is not about helping people with great tools as much as making profit and that 'nice guy' image just helps sales because customers feel good about supporting a good company (and overall, I do feel they are not as bad as some other companies out there...so they either aren't, or project that 'nice guy' image very well!).

Also, although this doesn't make up for the $799 starting price, remember that the Mac Mini was released originally in 2005 for $499. Thats ~$650 in 2018 money which makes the price hike seem not as bad. It also used to be a plastic enclosure if I'm not mistaken, and now it is a unibody aluminum enclosure, not exactly a free upgrade. I much prefer the look, feel, and rigidity of the new aluminum mini. Whats more? In 2006 with the upgrade to Intel processors, the Mac Mini was bumped to $599. $599 in 2006 ~ $750 in 2018. Suddenly this price hike doesn't look so unreasonable with the better build materials. Remember, Steve was very much in command back in 2006 and he liked to jack up the prices too.

Apple did hike their prices make no mistake, but the mini's starting price is not that far out of line with what Apple priced their computers at back in the era of Steve Jobs. Apple didn't get more expensive so much as the 'other guys' got cheaper with AMD and Celerons and Pentiums (now a budget brand CPU!) and SATA HDDs and other legacy technology. Make no mistake I have no doubt at all we are being charged an Apple tax here, but I don't think we want spinning HDDs and Celerons anyway...

Unfortunately, I feel Apple is losing touch with reality and that Tim Cook has surrounded himself with rich "yes" people, as the mini was originally made so the "poor" could afford a entry level computer, today that stopped as $800 is not affordable compared to entry level PC's, this logic also applies to iPads. Apple needs to introduce a sub-$500 entry level computer that would allow the masses to embrace. Ie, the mini default ram should be 16 and 8 for a true entry level $499 (today's offer is an insult to anyone with any computer knowledge!!)

Long Live Steve Job and I hope he visits Tim Cook in his dreams to wake Tim up to the masses that need better access... (Tim, this is why Android is still around, offer an actual affordable, true lowend product for the poor!!)

Yeah, $800 is a little high but I guess Apple is not about helping people with great tools as much as making profit and that 'nice guy' image just helps sales because customers feel good about supporting a good company (and overall, I do feel they are not as bad as some other companies out there...so they either aren't, or project that 'nice guy' image very well!).

Also, although this doesn't make up for the $799 starting price, remember that the Mac Mini was released originally in 2005 for $499. Thats ~$650 in 2018 money which makes the price hike seem not as bad. It also used to be a plastic enclosure if I'm not mistaken, and now it is a unibody aluminum enclosure, not exactly a free upgrade. I much prefer the look, feel, and rigidity of the new aluminum mini. Whats more? In 2006 with the upgrade to Intel processors, the Mac Mini was bumped to $599. $599 in 2006 ~ $750 in 2018. Suddenly this price hike doesn't look so unreasonable with the better build materials. Remember, Steve was very much in command back in 2006 and he liked to jack up the prices too.

Apple did hike their prices make no mistake, but the mini's starting price is not that far out of line with what Apple priced their computers at back in the era of Steve Jobs. Apple didn't get more expensive so much as the 'other guys' got cheaper with AMD and Celerons and Pentiums (now a budget brand CPU!) and SATA HDDs and other legacy technology. Make no mistake I have no doubt at all we are being charged an Apple tax here, but I don't think we want spinning HDDs and Celerons anyway...

You guys are whining about the cheapest and most cost effective Macs that Apple sells.

It's not the original case design. As Apple execs have explained, they don't do change for change's sake. Changing its design would require a functional reason to do so. What would the reason be? It's a small box with stuff inside and ports on the back.

I'm actually relieved they didn't do some kind of crazy re-design. I like the form-factor of the mini, ports available, etc. As far as updates to the mini go (within reason) this is about my best hoped for outcome.

(I haven't read all the responses yet... but) can anyone enlighten me a bit on the difference between the i5 and i7 options? Is it mainly some extra cache, or is there a difference in hyper-threading or other things too?

I was really hoping I’d be able to by now (dad paid for half of my Mac Pro nearly a decade ago now) but I still can’t afford any of this stuff so I’m going to have to do the heart transplant on the ‘09 8core to squeeze another year or two out of it. Like another poster clarified — I don’t think the prices are outrageous ( 4K over 10yrs not bad for a Pro machine ) just that currently they are slightly out of my budg. Either that or get a used trash can to tide me over till I see what the deal is with the NNMP & make up my mind from there.

edit:: I’m thinking possibly even lower for NNMP, but wanted to be realistic!

I'm looking to configure the Mac Mini for purchase. Does anyone know if the 32GB option are 2x16 GB modules or a single 32GB module with a socket left over? Is anyone selling single 32GB modules?

Should I just go with the 8GB configuration and then purchase 2x32GB modules outside of Apple? Any advice is appreciated. Thanks.

I’ve been using a 2014 dual core i5 Macmini* as my daily driver for a long time, so I’m so happy to see Apple finally come through for people who want to use the Macmini as a “serious” computer.[*with *8GB RAM, a user installed 256 GB SSD from OwC.com, a 4K external monitor and a Radeon 580 eGPU [with the OS hacked to run it over TB2]]

Based on information so far and a quick of research, I’ve assumed and then pre-ordered the following:

I ordered:max CPU [the i7]- for 12 threads minimum RAM [8 GB], as I will upgrade to 32 GB myself with off the shelf SO-DIMMs512 GB SSD [256 GB is a little confined, but 512 GB more than enough for what I need, as I have raided external usb-3 storage for large files [photo library and iTunes library], archives, etc...]

If I find out the SSD is upgradable before order is fulfilled, I may cancel and downgrade to the 128 GB SSD and then upgrade in future myself... but I think it’s unlikely [but I wasn’t expecting a 6 core i7 and socketed RAM before today, so who knows...]

I will likely do exactly the same order -- at the end of November (once my latest billing is received -- I like having at least 2 years cash for expenses in the bank before spending any money) [I just finished rebuilding my Linux 'server' box - 9700K, 64GB RAM, 2TB SSD, 12TB Hard drive, Aorus Master Z390]

I love the 180° turn in Mac design. Maybe I'm living in the reality distortion field, but the last few Mac hardware updates seem much more substantial. I love seeing them move their T chip technology through the Mac line. One could argue that the most likely Mac to leave off the T chip is the Mini—its (traditionally) such minimalist Mac. Putting a T chip in the Mini sends a signal that this is a core component fo the Mac platform moving forward.

When Intel leaves Apple with no significantly new tech for years, Apple has gotten resourceful and developed some great supporting technology. Best part about it is no other vendor can just order T chips from Intel to make equivalent secure machines. Apple is designing they own differentiating tech and they don't have to share it. Apple has been crafting a PR story about privacy and security for years. Now they have that strategy baked into silicon that will soon be shipping in every Mac.

I found this whitepaper from Apple (which is very nice) about the T2, and was updated this month.

Although I haven't read it in detail, I noticed that the T2 has many elements Windows and business devices as Thinkpads had for years. IBM/Lenovo have been offering hardware encrypted hard drives for close to 10 years. Windows 8 was the first version with Secure Boot and it think the first version of Windows that worked with the TPM chip. Windows 10 is a step higher, since now Bitlocker integrates with hardware encrypted HDD. Plus MS have Windows Hello since the SP4 a few years ago.

It's true that PC vendors don't have access to the T2 chip, but they still have the tools and hardware to secure their devices. At the end, it's nice to see that many vendors are looking seriously to secure their hardware.

I guess my point wasn't that no one else has these kind of features.

My point is that Apple developed it's own solution and didn't buy it from someone else.

When they buy from someone else, they end up victims of their own success: Apple required PowerPC chips with certain attributes, but since it wasn't aligned with the way their vendors wanted to take the platform, Apple had to jump ship. Now Intel is happy to sit on their laurels and milk the tech industry while releasing precious little breakthrough technology. Apple is in the position of having built up a market of users happy to pay a premium for premium product, but their vendors all like, "woah, there, big shooter! We are gonna take things REAL easy and trickle out the tech slowly and make every cent possible at every incremental improvement. That's how we roll."

I'm happy to see Apple roll their own, wether or not they invented the tech or not.

I can't understand this obsession with who had what first.

Apple didn't invent the smartphone, but it hasn't exactly held them back.

Welp, people got what they wanted. What will the next complaint be? (Price, of course, right)

Recycled aluminium smells funny or some such nonsense.

Stenchgate.

You saw it here first.

ߤ㦬t;br>That sounds ridiculous and too unreasonable to ever be true… which is why it's entirely possible with whatever-the-fuck has been going on in the Universe for the last 2 years.

Heh.

Just you wait.

It'll start with a YouTube video of someone sniffing his MacBook Air and then wrinkling his nose.

Next Bloomberg will pick it up and run with a story that sniffing a MacBook Air will make your septum fall out. Apple will ask for evidence of this. Bloomberg will release a statement saying it has spoken to at least six heavy cocaine snorters who corroborate their story, so they're standing by it. They will not produce their names or their rap sheets, but will repeat the story again, a week later, adding that sniffing an Amazon hub can make you impotent, which they 'prove' with an interview with an unnamed source who was hospitalised with severe burns about his groin after using his Hub for something that Amazon politely say, "it wasn't exactly specced for."

GoogleGuy will write a page long post that posts several unrelated links which he will try to tie together into a suggestion that the story might smell a bit iffy. I will respond with a completely unrelated article demonstrating that the Google Hub has an undocumented, unsecured API that allows it to be interrogated for information and shut down by any device on the same network.

Meanwhile, a first time poster will sneak in and leave a link to a National Enquirer piece that states if you rearrange the phrase "MacBook Air" by removing all the letters and adding in: A, D O, F, L, I, H, T, L, E, R then the laptop actually appears to be named after a well-known genocidal despot.

Three other first time posters arrive, claim to have been Mac users since 1876, and that their brand new MacBook Airs smell really weird.

Three old-timers post that if Steve were alive, MacBook Airs would smell like strawberries and cream.

Someone says something about Trump.

Two people are handed temporary bans.

DED writes an article which says MacBook Airs don't smell, but Android users do. Ten Android users sign up and AI has it's best click through day of the month.

Three more people are handed temporary bans.

At the end off the quarter, Apple announces that it can now afford the sun.

Apple ALMOST nailed the Mac Mini. They should have offered one with dual flash SSDs like the iMac Pro and a maybe a SATA bus for 2nd large SATA SSD. An i9 would have been nice.

However, 64GBs RAM, 2TB flash, 6-Core i7 and the T2, (love all that!), if it’s not $2500 for the high end model I’ll buy a pair. And please, no more soldering parts Apple please. I’m still using modified 2009 Mac Pros for a reason.

We’ll see.

@nightwatch : should every component be socketed, wire-wrapped, or proto-boarded together? If socketed, then how are the connections for the socket base made without solder?

I'm ok with the soldered down FLASH if that's the only way to get us the really high speed SSD, but if they could have socketed the SSD, they should have. Ditto the CPU. The CPU would be easily made accessible without solder.

BTW: External SATA is silly when you have Thunderbolt Also, graphics card can be external. That's a very nice feature. I suspect it's very expensive to actually do though because you need a rarely purchased Thunderbolt to PCIe card cage? I don't know how expensive or if the prices won't drop if even MSWindows computers have this capability.

Check out the Gigabyte Z370XP. If Apple had given us the M.2 sockets, the CPU socket, and the RAM sockets, we'd have a computer which could be run for multiple processor generations. it would have cut into the profits from Apple, and it would have made it harder to support. Also, then they'd be competing with the likes of the Gigabyte computer. Gigabyte's M.2 sockets can be set up, in BIOS, with RAID striping to double the speed.

I'm ok with Apple giving us less service-able computers than some of the other vendors, especially since the computers do work for so long and with frequent MacOS updates. And they are very cool looking.

If I was bummed about anything Apple is doing it's the Rights Management and taking away the ability to run any and all applications off of a network drive.

More powerful than the current Mac Pro and still no mention of the replacement Mac Pro either. Ugh, what a time to be a pro Mac user

There’s another way to look at this. If the iMac Pro and the Mac mini AND the new iPad Pros are such massive upgrades in computing power, just IMAGINE what the Mac Pro will be able to do. This is a renaissance for Apple’s hardware and a renaissance for the Mac line in particular.

More powerful than the current Mac Pro and still no mention of the replacement Mac Pro either. Ugh, what a time to be a pro Mac user

There’s another way to look at this. If the iMac Pro and the Mac mini AND the new iPad Pros are such massive upgrades in computing power, just IMAGINE what the Mac Pro will be able to do. This is a renaissance for Apple’s hardware and a renaissance for the Mac line in particular.

For the love of God, man; don't mess with their expectations! It can only end in tears!

$4,199 for the Maxed out mini! While I'm hopeful that the ram will be upgraded via third party ram (read $1,000 less!), the fact is the SSD is Apple proprietary and so either you upgrade when you order or your pretty stuck until used minis start showing up on eBay.

Unfortunately, I feel Apple is losing touch with reality and that Tim Cook has surrounded himself with rich "yes" people, as the mini was originally made so the "poor" could afford a entry level computer, today that stopped as $800 is not affordable compared to entry level PC's, this logic also applies to iPads. Apple needs to introduce a sub-$500 entry level computer that would allow the masses to embrace. Ie, the mini default ram should be 16 and 8 for a true entry level $499 (today's offer is an insult to anyone with any computer knowledge!!)

Long Live Steve Job and I hope he visits Tim Cook in his dreams to wake Tim up to the masses that need better access... (Tim, this is why Android is still around, offer an actual affordable, true lowend product for the poor!!)

Price for a maxed out mini is irrelevant... Apple could offer a 15TB SSD option and that would be priced at around $12,000. To use the maxed out number as a point of argument is lazy and trollish. What is a good point of comparison is what taking what the average or mean user would order and then doing it based on the specs of the machine... just because Apple offers a higher end config does not mean that is a good point of comparison. A maxed out iMac Pro is $13,000+ but your average user is not going to walk in and buy 128GB of RAM / 8-Core... they will figure out what they need and the most economical solution.

Simply put, the "poor" entry level computer is not what your average "non-professional" buys... they walk in and buy an iMac -- or they walk in and buy one of the laptop configurations (most likely the laptop). I have never known any 'switchers' in the last 8 years to buy a Mac Mini (personal experience) -- Mac Minis tend to be bought by more technical or experienced Mac users. I know of at least one company that will place an order for these computers -- which might be as many as 100 by one customer by year-end.

For a new user (old or young) that does not have professional needs (behind the computer day after day) an occasional computer to do things... the iPad with a keyboard is more than enough for many... and it is available at rock-bottom entry levels.

No, the SSD is a permanent drive. If you need more storage - you plug a drive into the USB or Thunderbolt port... you can get either a spinning rust drive or high end SSD based array... you could even build your own SAN.